


Five Minute Interlude - His

by Occasionalcoffeethereturn



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:17:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Occasionalcoffeethereturn/pseuds/Occasionalcoffeethereturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can be read as a stand alone but probably better if you read Bedtime Promises and Five Minute Interlude - Hers first.</p>
<p>David ponders as he waits patiently for her to open up that bathroom door...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Minute Interlude - His

She's going to excuse herself any second. If she just needs to collect her thoughts for a minute she'll say she's getting a glass of water and fetch me one. If she needs longer or is more upset she'll hide in the bathroom. It's not so much the expression on her face that gives her away, it's what she does with her eyes. She'll look at me for a fraction of a second too long and something inside her will tip her thoughts over the edge from feeling happy and content to feeling totally and completely overwhelmed. Then her eyes will flick away and she'll move away from me.

I'll try and hold onto her because I won't want her to let her go, I'd love for her to tell me what's going on in her head and try and help her. But I know I have to. I just have to believe that she will come back to me. That's easier said than done when it comes to Gillian. I've let her go for her sake too many times and those memories are haunting. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? I disagree.

And that's exactly what she's just done. She looked right at me, kissed me, held my hand. Then I felt her hand slipping out of mine, followed by those ocean blue eyes of hers darting away from mine. And I've let her go. Because I know that it's in that moment, that second when her eyes lose mine that I know the connection of ours has been severed.

I remember that scene from an x-file in season two, that episode we nicknamed One Breast because of Gillian nursing Piper. Every time she does this I'm reminded of that scene with the row boat. She's lost in the middle of the lake and I'm standing on the shore desperate to get her back. I'm lying on my stomach on the jetty, hand dangling in the water swiping for that rope. The good thing is that over the last ten weeks she's spent less time on that lake and more time coming back to shore. I've reached the rope and tugged her back in my direction. She's paddled the rest. And it hurts me less each time. The stabs of pain have been reduced to pin pricks and that's something at least.

I know she'll be in there crying and not just because I can hear her. She's turned on the water to try and hide it but there may as well not be a door separating us. There's very little she can hide from me and I from her. Our synchronicity is something I've embraced though God knows there was a time I used to despise it. I only despised it because it was always there even when I didn't want it to be. I was trying to move on with my life; very difficult when someone else is on your mind but worse inside your soul. We are connected and intertwined with each other in a way that I cannot explain and neither can she. I feel it's completely out of the control of both of us. I suppose you might say we are fated to one another. I can't help knowing what and how she's thinking even if I don't know what she's feeling. 

I love her. Love. Four letters, one syllable. Woeful monosyllabic inadequacy that fails to do justice to the depth of how I feel about her. I saw her sat on the stairs in that Fox lot in LA before I met her and I watched her. I thought she was nothing special, or was she? Petite, slim, with firey red, badly dyed hair, arms full of bangles, finely sculpted long, pale fingers and terrible dress sense. And then I saw her eyes. They say eyes are a window to the soul and as my hazel met her blue something happened and my entire world as I knew it shifted on its axis. She probably thought I walked with a swagger, reality was she had quite literally stopped me in my tracks and I had stumbled.

She was beautiful, but guarded. But something in her face changed as she shook my hand and I knew she'd felt something shift too. She smiled and with her smile it was like she gave a little bit of herself to me, a tiny piece of her that I could hold in my hand. There was instant trust, instant respect and instant attraction. It wasn't love at first sight, but more 'I could fall in love with you so easily if I let myself.' And day by day I gave into it.

It had started as just sex, certainly for her I think. But nothing is ever really just about the sex, it's always more to one person than the other and I was the unlucky one this time. We had so much fun in the beginning getting to know each other. We filmed and we laughed and we made mistakes and poked fun at one another. I tried to help her find her feet and I held her when she cried because it was all too much for her. Then it reached a point where I was too much for her. I loved her but I had to let her go and find herself. She told me she couldn't do that with me around because 'where did I end and where did she start?'

Gillian deserved extra ordinary and I wanted to be extra ordinary for her. I tried. But what Gillian seemed to strive for was mediocre safety and what she thought she should probably do. What a sensible person should probably do. And for that reason I'm sure she married Clyde and what do married people do, well they have children. Maybe not ten seconds into their honeymoon but sometimes things happen that way.

I spent nearly three years waiting for that divorce knowing that one day it would happen and waiting for her to come back to me. I knew at first she'd need the sex to feel wanted, to vent frustration, to gain control. I can't deny I wasn't happy to oblige. I told myself that maybe this would be our time and we could get things right but it was too soon for her and I needed to feel loved. So I got married six weeks later. I hurt her badly, I know I did. Maybe I should have given her more time. But I needed to give something and someone else a chance to try and make me happy. And Tea did for ten years until I fell completely apart. I unravelled like a ball of yarn knocked off an armchair by a cat. We never recovered after my rehab. Gillian meanwhile tried twice more to make mediocrity work for her on different continents and twice more to make children make up for relationship failings. I'm afraid I know the relief is all too temporary.

I've waited too long for Gillian, in life and in this moment while she's stuck on the other side of the damn door. I can now say the wait has been worth it for what we have together but not without deep hurt, sacrifice and casualties. She's nearly had her five minute interlude and as I get out of bed I'm thinking of how I'll get her back out here with me, where she belongs.

My hand is poised over the glossy wood of the door. Do I just knock? Do I try and open the door? What would she expect me to do? Probably joke with her to snap her out of the seriousness. I know she's upset about us being apart again for weeks on end. Is it cruel to say I'm pleased? I hate to see her hurting, I hate to see her cry. But she doesn't want to leave me and knowing this I feel like finally, our feelings for each other are on an even keel. This is her compromise for me. I'm not going to be waiting for her to come back to me, she will want to and she will.

'Sweetheart. Take your time but it won't be comfortable to sleep in that bath tub in there.'

I smile to myself as I hear her hand twist the door knob.


End file.
